In hair removal appliances it is known to mount on the hand-held part of the appliance various tool attachments interchangeably in order to effect the removal of body hairs in a variety of ways. On the one hand, use is made of an epilator head having tweezers-like clamping members which open and close at periodic intervals for capturing and clamping the hairs and plucking them out of the skin with their roots. The latter operation is performed by the tweezers-like clamping members being speedily moved away from the skin after the hair or the hairs are clamped. As a rule, such epilator heads comprise a cylinder adapted to be driven in a rotational motion and having arranged on its circumference spaced clamping members which open and close at periodic intervals in dependence upon the rotational position, so that an epilation is performed by the rotating cylinder.
On the other hand, it is also possible to mount on the hand-held part of such hair removal appliances hair cutter heads which operate in the manner of the long-hair cutter of a shaving apparatus and effect a so-called depilation of the body hairs. In this arrangement, the hair cutting attachment may comprise a blade bar which is movable in a translational reciprocating motion across a shear plate or a shear bar so that body hairs clamped in between are sheared off.
In lieu of using such tool attachments operating according to various principles of operation, it is also possible to use different tool attachments which basically operate according to the same principle of hair removal. Thus it is known, for example, to use different implementations of the afore-mentioned epilator heads which may differ, for example, in the number of clamping members or in the rotational velocity of the clamping cylinder in order to extract the hairs at different intensities.
Problems presenting themselves in this context are the different types of driving motions to be accomplished. On the one hand, this may be just a different rotational velocity of clamping cylinder. On the other hand, however, also entirely different driving motions may be required as, for example, the translational oscillating driving motion of the hair cutting attachment on the one hand and the rotary driving motion of the epilator attachment on the other hand.
To solve these problems, it has already been proposed to install in the respective tool attachments different gearing arrangements in order to be able to couple them to the same drive mechanism in the hand-held part. For example, EP 0 630 596 B1 discloses a hair removal appliance of the type initially referred to in which the respective tool attachments are adapted to be coupled to a driving gear arranged at the forward end of the hand-held part. In order to be able to achieve different driving motions for the hair cutter head and the epilator head, an oscillatory gearing arrangement is installed in the hair cutter head which converts the rotary motion of the drive pinion in the hand-held part into a translational reciprocating motion of the cutter bar. This solution is, however, relatively complex since each tool attachment requires a gearing arrangement of its own when a different driving motion is to be accomplished. Even when the same principle of motion but at different speeds is to be implemented as is the case, for example, when two epilator heads are to be driven at different speeds, the tool attachments still require the installation of corresponding gearing arrangements. This is a disadvantage particularly in cases where the tool attachments have to be replaced in the course of time because of wear.